The sequel to Final Fantasy XIII will be in the hands of North American gamers in about six months’ time. Square Enix has announced XIII-2 will be out in North America sometime in January 2012.
Following the very linear XIII, the sequel is said to be more varied and open. Director Motomu Toriyama told Famitsu after E3 that, whereas XIII was story-driven, XIII-2 is “player-driven. The player actively explores the world, and events take place based on his actions. It’s made to allow a lot of choices to be made by the player. Compared to XIII, we’re using very few prerendered scenes; it’s mostly realtime.”
Players will be able to finish its story in about 40 hours, although producer Yoshinori Kitase has said they will then be able “to replay the game in a new sort of way,” something that “will be a different system” from the standard New Game+ option.
